Boy, between the nasty ice situation throughout a large swath of the Northeast overnight, the snows back to the west and brutal cold diving down the Rockies and Plains, we continue to suffer winter at it’s harshest. Upwards of 1 million lost power due to ice accumulation across PA and from DC up to New York City while it was all about the snow up into New England.

Parts of the Plains including Kansas in particular picked up some big snow totals with records breaking in Wichita.

Check out these lows this morning!

The bitter cold has held firm all the way to North Texas today where it’s still 7 degrees in Amarillo at this hour.

The frigid air stays anchored for the next few days between storms. Check out these ‘highs’ tomorrow according to weather.com.

Lows tomorrow night

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Here’s a look at the latest ECMWF showing the storm exiting but still remaining snowy up across New England tonight. The next system edges into California where it will provide some decent rains. Just brutal cold in between.

By tomorrow you can see some decent rain falling over central and particularly northern California from the Bay Area up into the Redwood Forest. The 1040 high centred over Kansas means COLD AIR from Rockies to East Coast.

As you can see below, by Saturday we have a system crossing the Midwest while another system forms in the south, what should or could happen is that these two features join forces and produce a bigger coastal storm. Modelling has a negative tilt to the trough that would significantly deepen if the two disturbances phase, acting likely a magnet for coastal storm formation.

By 84 hours or later Saturday, it shows that phasing but the system heads out to sea. The southern feature appears stronger than the northern feature and so phasing the two would drop heights and sharpen the trough considerably and by doing so, should hook a coastal storm more north than ENE like the model shows. So, the current ECMWF looks wrong and I think the models over the next 24 to 48 hours could well go back to the bigger snow situation for the Northeast.

Indeed more systems and rain pushes into drought stricken California, so this is a MUCH healthier pattern here.

The latest ECMWF snow totals are well down on previous runs but because of the current solution, it would be.

GFS well backed away too.

Wouldn’t be surprised if the Big Cities once again go back below 10 degrees once this thing clears out.

Oh and here comes ANOTHER system which could be another big snow maker for the Heartland.

As for California. The 7 day QPF model shows some very decent rain amounts with .25″ in Southern California (not that much) but head north and it has 3-5″ from the Bay Area northwards, 5-7″ for the Northern Sierra.

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